Every day he saw the chief inspector and the construction company foreman engaged in private discussion at the far end of the trailer lab. The thundering and continual boom of the asphalt plant twenty yards up the road drowned out their words. Black smoke billowed over the trailer, infiltrated the ventilation system. He worked in a world of pitch, tar, gravel, sand, smoke, oil, bombinating uproar, blatant corruption and the rich gentlemanly smell of bitumen. He drove his pickup home in the evening with face and hands and neck blackened as a coal miner’s. He might as well have been back in West Virginia.

Henry built up the fire in the kitchen stove and carried in six buckets of water, half filling the galvanized tub. When the water became hot he climbed in and scrubbed himself, using a rough brush and a cake of gray gritty Lava soap. Splashing soapy water everywhere, stove lids sizzling.

Myra stood in the doorway in her paint-smeared artist’s smock, a spatter of paint on her nose and eyebrows. (Highly arched, distinguished brows, he thought, above intelligent and mocking eyes.) She watched him, her man her husband (good God!) wiping the dried sweat and smeared soot from his face upon a clean rag and said, Happy now? Satisfied?

It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m okay. He got out of the tub, swabbed himself vigorously with a big towel. It’s them other folks are in bad shape.

Stop talking like a fool. You threw away four years of graduate school to become an asphalt inspector.

Trainee. It’s only temporary. He pulled on his jeans. No underwear.

Trainee. And now look at you. How am I supposed to explain this to my family? How can I explain it to myself?

Henry smiled, putting on a clean shirt. Remember what your father said. “Sleep over with him, liff around with him but for the luff of Gott marry him? Him for a husband you twist the knife in my heart.”

He never said any such thing.

That’s what you told me.

And don’t you make fun of my poor old father either. He’s dying, you know.

Everybody dies. He’s almost sixty years old. He makes too much fuss about it.

Her eyes grew narrow. You cruel bastard. You cruel heartless pig. He’s a better man than you’ll ever be. He worked all his life. He provided for his family. He never cheated on his wife. He’s a good man, a good kind honest man…. The tears welled up in her eyes.

Henry stopped buttoning the shirt. Sorry, Myra. I’m sorry I said that. He reached for her, tried to embrace her. She struck his arms away, turned her back to him. Honest, honey, I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.

How would you feel if you had to go through heart surgery over and over?

I don’t know. But he thought: Men who know how to live know how to die.

Maybe you wouldn’t be so brave either.